How much do grit and positive thinking matter when the world around you is starved of support and opportunity?

Finally, a book that explains why self-help gurus and motivational speakers mostly fail to deliver, and what really produces results.

Michael Ungar's Change Your World shows that recovery, functioning and positive change in the face of adversity is not a lonely path trod by individuals; here lies the personal and social transformative power of resilience.
- Joel Reyes, Sr. Education and Institutional Development Specialist, World Bank

The entire self-improvement industry puts the responsibility for change on us as individuals, producing few if any long-term changes in our health or happiness. In this mind-bending look at what the science of resilience teaches us about success, Dr. Michael Ungar shows that individual growth depends very little on what we think, feel, or behave. Dr. Ungar is one of the world's leading experts on thriving through adversity. Delving into the latest research, he demonstrates that the ethic of rugged individualism and the victim-blaming politics that come with it are red herrings in the science of success.

Dr. Ungar explores reals lives, across age and culture, and discovers that the answers lie in the people and the support systems around us. Supportive spouses, caring families, nurturing employers, and effective governments are very often the difference between individual success and failure. The good news is that it is easier to change your environment than it is to change yourself. Indeed, Dr. Ungar has solid evidence that we can influence the world around us in ways that will make us more resilient both at home and on the job.

Are we sometimes too strong for our own good?

Amid epidemics of anxiety and depression, threats of ecological and economic disaster, not to mention a pandemic, resilience has been the buzzword of the decade, the answer to every challenge we face as individuals, organizations, and communities. We seldom stop to ask if our insistence on persevering is really in our long-term interest. Does it trap us in patterns of behavior that no longer make sense, foreclose too soon on better opportunities, and stifle positive development? With examples ranging from overly optimistic thinking habits to risk-averse descisions by corporations and governments, Michael Ungar, one of the world's leading resilience experts, explores how even the most resilient among us can fail catastrophically. The Limits of Resilience is a witty, compassionate argument that true resilience lies not so much in always bouncing back but in our ability to self-disrupt and embrace occasional but much-needed failure.

This resource offers counseling strategies to promote adolescents' overlooked strengths and create healthy alternatives to problem behaviors such as bullying, drug use, violence, and promiscuity.

More than two decades after Michael Rutter (1987) published his summary of protective processes associated with resilience, researchers continue to report definitional ambiguity in how to define and operationalize positive development under adversity. The problem has been partially the result of a dominant view of resilience as something individuals have, rather than as a process that families, schools, communities and governments facilitate. Because resilience is related to the presence of social risk factors, there is a need for an ecological interpretation of the construct that acknowledges the importance of people's interactions with their environments. The Social Ecology of Resilience provides evidence for this ecological understanding of resilience in ways that help to resolve both definition and measurement problems.

Therapist Michael Ungar uses the struggles of three families and his own history to help the parents of difficult children.

Family therapist Michael Ungar, internationally renowned for his work on child and youth resilience, takes us into his world each Wednesday, when he meets with three families with very troubled children. Here, Michael shares a side of himself that is not the all-knowing therapist: he too was a troubled teen, growing up in an emotionally and physically abusive home.

In the book, Michael shares nine things that all troubled kids need from their parents that will help them turn their lives around and flourish:

• Structure
• Consequences
• Parent-child connections
• Lots of peer and adult relationships
• A powerful identity
• A sense of control
• A sense of belonging, spirituality, and life purpose
• Fair and just treatment by others
• Safety and support

Hopeful in tone, and using knowledge gathered from Michael's work around the world, I Still Love You shows that it is never too late to help our children change and reconnect with those who will always love them.

This new edition of Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs provides detailed descriptions of techniques, ample case studies, fascinating and easy to understand explanations of research, and rich stories of how social workers, psychologists, counselors, child and youth care workers, and other mental health professionals can help young people become more resilient.

Fully updated and including new discussions of trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), resilience, genetic susceptibility to stress, the impact of migration and natural disasters on families, and much more, Dr. Ungar shows why we need to work just as hard changing the environments that surround children as we do changing children themselves. Building on lessons learned from clinical, community and residential settings, Dr. Ungar discusses a shortlist of 20 essential skills that can enhance the effectiveness of frontline mental health services without relying on expensive, resource heavy programs. Along with descriptions of the skills necessary to talk with clients about the factors that put their mental health at risk, Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs presents systemic practices clinicians can use in their everyday work to help their clients transform their worlds and improve their access to the resources they need to succeed.

Chapters present a variety of practical strategies that clinicians can use to enhance and sustain the therapeutic value of their work, including engaging with children's extended family; addressing issues of community violence, racism and homophobia; and helping parents and teachers understand (and change) children's maladaptive coping strategies. A series of videos accompanies the text to help readers see the skills that are discussed being applied to real-life situations mental health professionals and their community allies encounter.

This new edition of Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs provides detailed descriptions of techniques, ample case studies, fascinating and easy to understand explanations of research, and rich stories of how social workers, psychologists, counselors, child and youth care workers, and other mental health professionals can help young people become more resilient.

Fully updated and including new discussions of trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), resilience, genetic susceptibility to stress, the impact of migration and natural disasters on families, and much more, Dr. Ungar shows why we need to work just as hard changing the environments that surround children as we do changing children themselves. Building on lessons learned from clinical, community and residential settings, Dr. Ungar discusses a shortlist of 20 essential skills that can enhance the effectiveness of frontline mental health services without relying on expensive, resource heavy programs. Along with descriptions of the skills necessary to talk with clients about the factors that put their mental health at risk, Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs presents systemic practices clinicians can use in their everyday work to help their clients transform their worlds and improve their access to the resources they need to succeed.

Chapters present a variety of practical strategies that clinicians can use to enhance and sustain the therapeutic value of their work, including engaging with children's extended family; addressing issues of community violence, racism and homophobia; and helping parents and teachers understand (and change) children's maladaptive coping strategies. A series of videos accompanies the text to help readers see the skills that are discussed being applied to real-life situations mental health professionals and their community allies encounter.

Multisystemic Resilience brings together for the first time in one volume a wide range of resilience scholars who have been wrestling with how to explain processes of recovery, adaptation, and transformation in contexts of change and adversity. With contributions from psychologists, epigeneticists, ecologists, architects, disaster specialists, engineers, sociologists, social workers, and public health researchers among others, this innovative volume creates a platform for an interdisciplinary conversation about how to effectively research resilience across systems. Even more, it explores how to identify possible solutions to problems that threaten the physical and mental health of individuals, the wellbeing of our communities, and the sustainability of our planet. Every chapter provides a detailed review of systemic resilience from one disciplinary perspective, drawing from cutting edge research and case studies. Together these chapters show that considering the resilience of
multiple systems at once is instrumental to understanding the processes of change and sustainability.

This resource offers counseling strategies to promote adolescents′ overlooked strengths and create healthy alternatives to problem behaviors such as bullying, drug use, violence, and promiscuity.

More than two decades after Michael Rutter (1987) published his summary of protective processes associated with resilience, researchers continue to report definitional ambiguity in how to define and operationalize positive development under adversity. The problem has been partially the result of a dominant view of resilience as something individuals have, rather than as a process that families, schools, communities and governments facilitate. Because resilience is related to the presence of social risk factors, there is a need for an ecological interpretation of the construct that acknowledges the importance of people's interactions with their environments. The Social Ecology of Resilience provides evidence for this ecological understanding of resilience in ways that help to resolve both definition and measurement problems.

Michael Ungar's Nurturing Hidden Resilience in Troubled Youth is the first text in its field to examine resilience as a social construct; it offers a comprehensive theory of resilience and a model for the application of this theory to direct practice with high-risk youth in clinical, residential, and community settings.

Ungar's analysis of resilience and approach to intervention focuses on the unique group of youth who are labeled dangerous, deviant, delinquent, and disordered. He explores how these youth discover and maintain well-being through discursive empowerment: using detailed case studies, Ungar finds that high-risk youth explain their problematic behaviours, such as gang affiliations and drug and alcohol use, as strategic ways to compose healthy stories about themselves that bring them experiences of control and acceptance. Unlike most extant literature on risk and resiliency, Ungar's text provides a novel and fresh approach to the resiliency construct and, perhaps more importantly, gives voice to the adolescents themselves.

Timely in subject and original in perspective, Nurturing Hidden Resilience in Troubled Youth challenges what popular media refer to as a 'youth problem.' Ungar offers an alternative approach to troubled youth and suggests that we build upon, rather than resist, their constructions of resilience as a method of effective intervention.

Michael Ungar's Nurturing Hidden Resilience in Troubled Youth is the first text in its field to examine resilience as a social construct; it offers a comprehensive theory of resilience and a model for the application of this theory to direct practice with high-risk youth in clinical, residential, and community settings.

Ungar's analysis of resilience and approach to intervention focuses on the unique group of youth who are labeled dangerous, deviant, delinquent, and disordered. He explores how these youth discover and maintain well-being through discursive empowerment: using detailed case studies, Ungar finds that high-risk youth explain their problematic behaviours, such as gang affiliations and drug and alcohol use, as strategic ways to compose healthy stories about themselves that bring them experiences of control and acceptance. Unlike most extant literature on risk and resiliency, Ungar's text provides a novel and fresh approach to the resiliency construct and, perhaps more importantly, gives voice to the adolescents themselves.

Timely in subject and original in perspective, Nurturing Hidden Resilience in Troubled Youth challenges what popular media refer to as a 'youth problem.' Ungar offers an alternative approach to troubled youth and suggests that we build upon, rather than resist, their constructions of resilience as a method of effective intervention.

The Handbook For Working With Children & Youth: Pathways To Resilience Across Cultures and Contexts examines lives lived well despite adversity. Calling upon some of the most progressive thinkers in the field, it presents a groundbreaking collection of original writing on the theories, methods of study, and interventions to promote resilience. Unlike other works that have left largely unquestioned their own culture-bound interpretations of the ways children and youth survive and thrive, this volume explores the multiple paths children follow to health and well-being in diverse national and international settings. It demonstrates the connection between social and political health resources and addresses the more immediate concerns of how those who care for children create the physical, emotional, and spiritual environments in which resilience is nurtured.

Engaging and timely, this book is an invaluable resource for parents who want their children to become socially responsible and globally aware adults

As youth culture seems to grow more self-centred and obsessed with Me,Michael Ungar shows us that, in fact, children today are as willing as ever to think We. Given the right signals, and some important changes to the homes we live in, our schools and communities, kids will seek out close connections with the adults in their lives. Like generations before them, they want to be noticed for the contributions they can make. What they need, though, is compassion and encouragement from parents, and some careful attention to their most important connections, those made at home. Combining inspiring stories taken from his clinical work with families and children with expert research gathered from around the world, Ungar reveals how the close connections kids crave, and the support adults provide, can help kids realize their full potential - and how it can also protect them from the dangers of delinquency, whether it be drug abuse, violence, or early sexual activity.

At a time when global issues and activism have come to the forefront, We Generation offers a fresh, optimistic way of thinking about our children's true nature and potential.